Best Laid Plans

Uproariously funny and provocative, tender and life-affirming, this is Kathy Lette at her very best.

TO DO LIST1) Buy hummus2) Pay Pilates teacher3) Find prostitute for son...When it comes to sex, even the best laid plans come unstuck – in the stickiest way possible

As a crossword-addicted English teacher, Lucy never expected to be arrested for kerb-crawling. But her autistic twenty-year-old son Merlin is desperate to lose his virginity, and a prostitute seems like the only option . . . only Lucy picks up an undercover policewoman instead.

Let off with a suspended sentence, Lucy resigns herself to the fact that her son will never have sex, let alone find love… until the morning she miraculously discovers Merlin in bed with a girl.

But is tough, tattooed Kayleigh just taking Merlin for a ride? If so, why? And what has brought Lucy’s snake of an ex-husband wriggling back into their lives?

As all her best laid plans for Merlin’s happiness chaotically unravel, will Lucy ever be able to cut her son’s psychological umbilical cord and start to live her own life? And will the funny, quirky and marvellously magical Merlin ever find real love?

With plenty of comic twists and emotional turns, Kathy Lette’s riotous yet heartrending novel tackles the taboo subject of sex for the ‘differently abled’ – and shows us that when it comes to sex, we all have special needs …

Reviews

“
With the wisecracking Lette at the helm, the gags flow thick and fast . . . But it is the thread of seriousness in the writing, the insistence on respecting people as individuals and not labelling them, that makes this an exceptional novel.
”

Mail on Sunday

“
With her usual mixture of huge heart and humour she rips the stigma out of autism
”

Ruby Wax

“
Deliciously rude and darkly funny, but with compassion and humanity at its heart. Read with relish.
”

“
Kathy Lette can turn from raunchy farce to the most tender emotion in a trice: this unputdownable book wrenches the heart and the laugh muscles with stunning panache.
”

Stephen Fry

“
An important and poignant subject - a mother’s search for the perfect girlfriend for her grown-up son with autism - that is also a hilarious and entertaining page- turner, written with Lette’s inimitable irreverence, brio and wit.
”

Jill Dawson

“
For the good of your immortal soul, and all your other vital organs, read this deeply touching tale.
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Billy Connolly

“
A winning blend of tenderness and hilarity
”

The Sydney Morning Herald

“
As her fans will expect and newcomers discover, this tale is perspicacious, pithy and witty. A tale of mother love which will twang your heart strings before you making you laugh out loud.
”

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Extract

It was never my intention to take my son kerb-crawling to pick up a prostitute. Nope. Kerb-crawling was definitely not on my ‘To Do’ list after ‘Buy hummus, sort sock drawer, do Pilates’.

A mother does many things for her son – running trays up to his bedroom for nothing more serious than a stubbed toe, detecting lost bits of sports kit, secretly completing overdue homework … But soliciting a prostitute shouldn’t be one of them. ‘So, how much to initiate my son sexually?’ are just not the words a bookish, cake-baking, cryptic-crossword-ninja, law-abiding mum of one ever expects to say to a working girl in thigh-high boots and leather hot-pants in the dead of night in a seedy backstreet.